Lemuel Falk, a Russian theoretical chaoticist on the lam from terrestrial chaos, threads thick, callused fingers through a tangle of ash-dirty hair that manages to look wind-whipped even in the absence of wind. He leans his brow against an icy pane as the train spills through the marshaling yard toward the terminal; departures he can cope with but arrivals give him indigestion, migraines, shooting pains in his solar plexus. An implausible fiction stirs in his brain: he is the Great Headmaster, circa 1917. Long shot of a train creeping into the Finland Station. Tight on the paramount Homo sovieticus, seen through a rain-stained window, worrying himself sick he will be lynched or, worse, ignored. Vladimir Ilyich’s edginess infects Lemuel. His head
